Linear series on a general \(k\)-gonal curve (Q1969648)

In this work the authors investigate the variety \(W_{d}^{r}\) of special linear series on a general \(k\)-gonal curve \(C\) of genus \(g\). They prove a main theorem and present a conjecture about the scheme whose underlying set \(V_{e}^{e - f}(g^{r}_{d})\) is the set of divisors in \(C^{(e)}\) imposing at most \(e - f\) linear conditions on \(g^{r}_{d}\) (where \(e\) and \(f\) are non-negative integers). Among other consequences of the main theorem they prove that if \(r\) and \(d\) are positive integers such that \(d - g < r \leq k - 2\) and the Brill-Noether number \(\rho_{g}(d, r)\) is non-negative then \(W_{d}^{r}\) has an irreducible component of the ``expected'' dimension \(\rho_{g}(d, r)\) and a general element of this component is base point free. Along the way, they get a new proof of the classical existence result for special linear series. The proposed conjecture claims that if \(C\) is a general curve of genus \(g\) and \(d\), \(e\), \(f\) and \(r\) are non-negative integers, the Brill-Noether number is non-negative, \(r > d - g\), \(r > e - f\), \(g^{r}_{d}\) is a general linear series on \(C\) and \(V_{e}^{e - f}(g^{r}_{d})\) is non-empty, then \(V_{e}^{e - f}(g^{r}_{d})\) is equi-dimensional of the ``expected'' dimension \(e - f(r + 1 - e + f)\). As a consequence of the proof of the main theorem, the authors prove the conjecture in the case \(f = 1\), which implies that if \(r > 2(e - 1)\) then any \(E \in C^{(e)}\) imposes independent conditions on a general complete and special linear series \(g^{r}_{d}\).